Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is a very important issue. In the coming months, this committee has to address the issues of rural infrastructure, the creation of jobs and the provision of adequate services in rural Ireland. On the infrastructure front, we need to bring fibre to every house and business in rural Ireland. I find it extraordinary that Eir can provide fibre to homes in rural areas, including in the area where I live, which is very rural. This means the total national subsidy needed for fibre is very small. I believe 30 Mbps is ridiculous in this day and age. We need mobile services, we need roads and we need jobs.

I do not intend to focus on that today, however. The initial request for a meeting with this committee came from the Connemara councillors. There is an immediate job to be done. I would like to compliment the councillors and officials from Galway County Council on the rather stark submission they have made available. This committee deals with arts, heritage, rural, regional and Gaeltacht development and affairs. The parent Department is the Department of Regional Development, Rural Affairs, Arts and the Gaeltacht. This comes to the nub of the challenge we face, which has been raised by the councillors from Connemara. It is that the Department which has the responsibility for regional, rural and Gaeltacht affairs - let us remember large parts of the area of Connemara we are talking about are Gaeltacht areas - is the very same Department that is holding up the development of the road to Connemara.

It is a clear responsibility for this committee to try to find out from the Department how it can justify holding up the development of a key piece of infrastructure. This is not for some private person's benefit; it is public infrastructure. The further parts of Connemara are over 100 km from Galway city and we basically have a tarred-over track to the city. Years of work have been put in by various people, including myself, to get it designated under Transport 21 and to get an end-to-end development plan that would provide a road to minimum national standards for national secondary routes.

I read the submission from Galway County Council. I will come shortly to the practical part of what we do now, because it represents great to talk about the challenge but we need solutions to that challenge. Before dealing with that, I would like to say that while we must preserve the natural heritage, there will be bogs and there will be other natural heritage even if that were lost in Connemara.

However, if the Irish language is to die as a community language, it will, since it is not spoken on any other part of this planet as a community language, be gone from the face of the earth forever as a community language. Parts of the areas most synonymous with the most vibrant Gaeltacht communities - Carna, Cill Chiaráin, Rosmuc and Camus - are serviced by this road. It is ironic in 2016, some 100 years since the Rising, and in view of the fact that Pádraic Mac Piarais had his house in Rosmuc, that the Department responsible for heritage and the Gaeltacht cannot seem to strike a balance here.

The second point, which I believe is quite chilling, is that everybody knows that if one builds a road, it is actually better for the ecology, not worse. The run-off from the current road, including from tyres and everything else, goes straight into the local streams and can attack the pearl mussel. The only challenge we face is how to build the road without doing damage. I do not believe it is beyond the wit of engineers to design a system, as fail-safe as any human system can be, that will allow the road to be built without destroying the pearl mussel, in particular.

I am sorry that Mr. Liam Gavin, the director of services, is not sitting at the table because I have a very specific question for him. Can I take it that the council has tried to engage with the Department? The NPWS does not exist as a separate agency. Let us get that out of our head. The Ministers are in charge of the NPWS; it is not an agency. It is an integral part of the Department. They are not separate. Has the council tried in every way to engage with the service to overcome the difficulty in regard to the method statements.

I have a second point that Mr. Gavin might elucidate. I have alluded to the part of the road from Maam Cross to Oughterard. Can Mr. Gavin clarify whether, when there was an oral hearing before An Bord Pleanála on the road from Maam Cross to Clifden, the council went in with a development proposal? The council is acting on behalf of Transport Infrastructure Ireland, which is acting on behalf of the Government, which included the project in Transport 21. In other words, it was fulfilling Government policy. There is only one Government with collective responsibility so it includes the NPWS. Did the Government, in a moment of great schizophrenia through the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, oppose the granting of the planning permission on environmental grounds? Did we have the farce of two Departments acting on behalf of one Government that is meant to have a coherent policy going in to an oral hearing with separate messages, with one saying "Give it" and the other saying "Don't"? Maybe Mr. Gavin could clarify that issue.

Does Mr. Gavin believe it would be a helpful step if this committee were to demand that the Minister and her officials appear before it? We are very lucky we have two western Ministers of State in the Department, including Deputy Seán Kyne, who is responsible for the Gaeltacht. This is very relevant to the latter owing to his devolved responsibility for developing the Gaeltacht.